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Police: 93 Percent of People Arrested in Ferguson Not From Ferguson

Police officers arrest a demonstrator on August 18, 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri. Violent outbreaks have taken place in Ferguson since the shooting death of unarmed teenager Michael Brown by a Ferguson police officer on August 9th. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

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FERGUSON, Mo. (KMOX) - Police have reported that 93 percent of those arrested in Ferguson early this week were not Ferguson residents, and 27 percent don’t live in Missouri.

Of 52 people arrested on Monday, only four were from Ferguson, seven from nearby Florissant and two from Jennings. There were 15 from the city of St. Louis and 14 from out of state, including Illinois, New York, California and Washington, D.C. Most were arrested for refusal to disperse.

Following yesterday’s fatal police-involved shooting in North St. Louis, Chief Sam Dotson is responding to questions about safety in the city.

“I tried to get out to the community, get the story out in its totality, with as much information that I had, so that all of those questions people had could be answered sooner rather than later,” he says.

Dotson refutes claims the department is stretched too far because of deploying city officers to Ferguson.

“We have a plan and we have a contingency of officers, and we certainly will take care of the city of St. Louis to protect life and the businesses in the city,” he says.

Dotson says this is a time when the community needs its police officers, and he adds that even if he would try to give officers time off, they’d decline because they want to be at work.

“This is a time when the community needs their police officers, the officers know that the support is there in the community, and they want to come to work and they want to do their job,” he says.